When Loving It Isn’t the Question Anymore

By Derek Colvin, LPC-S, CGT - The Giant Therapist

Real. Raw. Unfiltered reflections on passion, aging, and the quiet grief of choosing wisely.

The Loving Question Shows Up Later in Life

There’s a moment that tends to arrive quietly, usually somewhere in midlife, where the question changes. It’s no longer Do I love this? That part is settled. You still love it. You still feel the pull toward it. The question becomes something heavier and harder to answer:

What does this cost me now?

That question doesn’t show up when you’re young. When you’re younger, energy feels endless, time feels expandable, and consequences feel far enough away that you don’t have to calculate them yet. You can grind late into the night, chase passion aggressively, and trust that everything else will somehow work itself out. But as you get older, responsibility gets louder. Your body starts sending clearer signals. Your time becomes more finite. And the cost of saying yes to one thing starts to mean saying no to several others. This is where a lot of men feel stuck. Not because they don’t know what they love, but because loving it no longer feels like enough of a reason on its own.

There comes a point where loving something isn’t the question anymore. The question is what it costs you now.

When Identity Gets Wrapped Around What You Do

For many men, passion isn’t just something they enjoy. It becomes who they are. Athletes know this intimately. Artists do too. When people recognize you for what you produce, perform, or create, it’s easy for your sense of worth to get tangled up in it. You don’t just do the thing. You are the thing.

That’s why stopping, slowing down, or even reconsidering direction can feel like a kind of death. It’s not just about letting go of an activity; it’s about facing the emptiness that shows up when that identity goes quiet. The silence can feel unbearable, not because you don’t know who you are, but because you’ve never had to meet yourself outside of performance.

This is where grief enters the picture. Not dramatic grief, but the quieter kind. The grief of realizing you may never be seen the way you once imagined, or that the version of success you were chasing might not arrive the way you hoped. And that grief deserves to be named, not rushed past.

Redefining Success Without Lying to Yourself

One of the most honest moments a man can have is admitting that his definition of success has changed, and that part of him still struggles with whether that change is wisdom or settling. There’s a tension there that shouldn’t be dismissed. Reframing success can feel like maturity, but it can also feel like self-protection against disappointment. Both can be true at the same time.

What becomes clear over time, though, is that success rooted only in recognition, money, or external validation is fragile. It demands constant output. It keeps the nervous system in a state of proving. And it often asks men to sacrifice relationships, health, and presence long before they realize the cost. When success shifts toward impact, meaning, and connection, something steadies. The pressure to be seen gives way to the desire to be useful. The need to impress softens into the hope that something you create might quietly help someone else feel less alone.

Impact lasts longer than applause, but it takes longer to notice.

The Hidden Cost of Effort Without Hope

One of the hardest realizations that comes with age is that effort doesn’t guarantee outcome. That’s a brutal truth for men who were raised to believe that if they just worked hard enough, something would eventually break their way. Over time, repeated disappointment can drain hope faster than failure itself. This is where many men find themselves quietly asking, How much effort is still wise? Not because they’ve grown lazy, but because pouring energy into something with diminishing returns starts to feel unsustainable. The body knows when it’s being asked to run on fumes. So does the psyche.

Learning to work smarter instead of harder isn’t just a business lesson. It’s an emotional one. It means letting go of the belief that exhaustion equals virtue. It means recognizing that rest isn’t weakness, and that grinding without strategy often comes from fear rather than faith.

Passion Doesn’t Have to Consume You to Be Real

One of the most important shifts that happens in maturity is the realization that passion doesn’t have to be all-consuming to be meaningful. There’s a difference between honoring something you love and letting it take over your entire life. Boundaries don’t kill passion. They protect it.

Creating space for passion within a life that also includes responsibility, relationships, and rest allows it to stay alive longer. When everything else is handled - when the bills are paid, the kids are cared for, the essentials are covered - passion can be enjoyed without resentment or panic riding alongside it. This is where the “both/and” mindset becomes essential. You don’t have to choose between being responsible and being alive. You don’t have to abandon creativity to be stable. But you also don’t have to burn everything down to prove that you still want it.

Passion doesn’t die from boundaries - it dies from neglect or chaos.

What Security Really Meant Growing Up

Often, the way men wrestle with passion and work traces back to early lessons about safety and approval. Some learned that rest meant laziness. Others learned that worth came from productivity. Some grew up in homes where security meant money, while others learned it meant keeping the peace or not being a burden. Without examining those early templates, it’s easy to chase things for reasons that no longer fit your life. A man might keep grinding not because it’s wise, but because stopping feels like disappointing someone who isn’t even in the room anymore. That’s not ambition. That’s old survival logic still running the system.

Understanding that difference can be freeing. It allows the adult part of you to step in and choose wisely, rather than letting the younger part keep driving out of fear.

Choosing Presence Over Performance

For many men, the biggest redefinition of success eventually comes down to relationships. Time with kids. Emotional availability. Being present instead of perpetually preoccupied. These things don’t show up on resumes or streaming platforms, but they shape legacies in quieter, more lasting ways. There’s grief here too. Grief over time lost, moments missed, and seasons that moved faster than expected. But there’s also opportunity. Repair is possible. Presence still matters. And choosing differently now doesn’t erase the past, but it does change the future.

If This Tension Feels Familiar

If you found yourself nodding while reading this, you’re not alone. This tug-of-war between passion and practicality is one many men carry silently. The goal isn’t to resolve it perfectly. The goal is to stop letting it live unexamined.

For more real, raw, unfiltered conversations about manhood, purpose, and the emotional work of growing older, follow @themajopodcast on Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Spotify, and all podcast platforms. On Facebook, you can find me at @thetherapygiant. On TikTok and IG you can find me at @thegiant_therapist

And if you’re at a place where this tension is starting to weigh on you - in your work, your relationships, or your sense of self - therapy can be a space to slow this down and make sense of it without pressure to perform. I work with men, women, and couples who want to understand the deeper stories shaping their choices and learn how to move forward with intention instead of exhaustion.

When loving it isn’t the questio

n anymore, wisdom begins by asking what kind of life you’re actually building.